


After the Dawn

by Dashboardjuliet



Category: The Daevabad Trilogy - S. A. Chakraborty
Genre: F/M, FIX IT BECAUSE I REFUSE THE EOG ENDING
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25581919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dashboardjuliet/pseuds/Dashboardjuliet
Summary: A character study of Nahri and how she evolves after the end of Empire of Gold. PLEASE don't read you haven't read EOG yet.
Relationships: Darayavahoush e-Afsin/Nahri e-Nahid
Kudos: 8





	After the Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> This is a super super work in progress. It will eventually be updated and fixed but I just need to get it out right now.

Daevabad is not rebuilt in a day, not that she was expecting it to be. The immediate healing of the land around it by the return of Suliman’s ring had been nothing short of a miracle, the best possible outcome. She still remembers the way her heart had raced as she’d flown over the land fixing itself on Mishmish. It had been breathtaking.

The city itself takes longer. Much longer, and after a month of things not still being fully fixed, Nahri is half convinced she’ll go crazy if she has to sit through one more committee meeting about city planning and governance. She loves the people of Daevabad, loves feeling that what she is doing matters, makes an impact in the many shafit lives in the city. But she’s getting restless, can feel the urge to run underneath her skin like a thousand squirming tendrils. It starts simple enough: she can’t sit still during meetings, finds herself picking at her nails and scribbling circles on the paper in front of her instead of paying attention to whoever's speaking at the moment. Things progress to larger things, leg shaking and foot tapping, actively missing meetings in favor of taking to the streets, doing things with her hands, actually working.

It had come to the point where one day, after missing two meetings about the establishment of a new hospital that she should have been present for, that she  _ should _ have cared about, that Ali had come to find her in the shafit quarter, sitting in on a surgery with Subha with Chandra balanced on her hip, allowing the baby to play with a loose curl from her hair. That was where she wanted to be, not dealing with bureaucrats. Ali fit in perfectly, it was what he was made to do, wheel and deal with people to cut the right plan. He knew how to get what he wanted and the words to use to get him there. She would rather just do. 

Their agreement had been an easy one to come to. He would stay, help the council run the city, and so would she, when she was there. But she couldn’t stay. She was never made to stay, she was always meant to be moving, even from the first moments that she really remembered, the Nile moving her along with its current to its shores, water flowing against her skin. The water didn’t speak to her the way it did to Ali and the marid, but the currents, the  _ constant movement _ , that she felt.

Her goodbyes are said slowly. Her leaving isn’t a short process. There are things in the city that do still require her immediate attention. She completes them neatly and quietly, the buzzing underneath her skin slowly growing incessant with every task she finishes. Her goodbyes in the shafit quarter are glorious, not one ounce of sadness to them. Subha, with all her nonchalant attitude, sheds a few quiet tears when she hugs her goodbye, Chandra babbling throughout the entire farwell. She left a few bobbles for her, entirely unsure of when she would be back, and she wasn’t entirely sure if her heart could take it if the child grew up not knowing of her.

Jamshid and Muntadhir are perhaps the worst. The tears come too easily with them, the history and relationships with them clogging her throat. They speak over dinner, date wine carrying them much farther into the night than she had planned. She’s not one for over indulgence, but with them,  _ for them, _ she will do just about anything. One drink turns into five and then she’s crying into Jamshid’s shoulder while he sobs into her shoulder with an equal ferocity, hands grasping at one another till their holding on to one another while slumped and sleeping, Muntadhir left to throw a blanket over the both of them.

Ali is her last goodbye, and the easiest. She’s surprised by it honestly, the way her heart doesn’t ache when she says goodbye to him, but mostly stays the same. They share a quiet meal, a quiet night, and then the next morning she leaves him with a soft kiss on the forehead for a goodbye. It’s enough for her at least, and she has no guilt at leaving him that way. 

She leaves with the sun, and doesn’t look backward.

\-----

The first breath that she takes outside of the boundaries of Daevabad, is one that she didn’t know she would be looking forward to. There’s nothing different with the air, nothing to change it, but somehow it feels different. Perhaps it’s the weight off her shoulders, the way everything seems to be left behind the boundary of the city that she now calls home, her worries now nonexistent. The hospital doesn’t exist out here, Jamshid and Muntadhir rest in her mind, Ali an ever present figure on her shoulder, but they’re not truly there by her side. For the first time in at least three months, Nahri is well and truly alone. 

She breathes deep, fully living in the movement of her body, the way her diaphragm opens and expands, reslishing the way it feels to be present in her body, to be physically whole and unbothered. Being outside the bounds of the city means that every stress that has called her shoulders home for the past seven years has been left in the city. They did not follow her out. Her monsters, and the shadows that have hunted her, are behind her now. Ghassan, Manizheh, the politicking and conniving. They’re no longer a part of her present, but her past. 

  
  



End file.
